Why do we care so much about bands breaking up? Maybe because the intense love of a certain type of music or particular act is part of our youth. Whether it's a young girl mourning the demise of a boy band or a middle-aged family man who's lost the last link with his misspent teens, it's a sad occasion.

It's lucky then that so many bands manage to patch up their differences. The Split Up (and the Almost Inevitable Reunion) looks at the most famous band break-ups and reformations (Radio 4 | Listen here). While some bands fall victim to "artistic differences", other reasons for dissolving groups are less commonplace: Bucks Fizz were unable to withstand David Van Day's wardrobe demands, for instance. And for some bands it's hard to tell whether they're together or not. The Verve have split three times and Pink Floyd's demise seems, as host Richard Coles puts it, almost as complicated as the 30 years war.

Whether the comeback is a "reunion tour" and genuine rebirth, however, bands largely seem to enjoy themselves more the second time round. Maybe because it all goes too fast the first time. Being at the eye of the storm probably isn't nearly as much fun as we imagine, whether you're Wham in the 80s or Blur in the 90s. Perhaps that is what really causes so many musical outfits to implode.

Dance, on the other hand, provides us with the perfectly united on-stage team that is the classic chorus line. Caroline Quentin, a former chorus member herself, continues to explore the genre, this week concentrating on the pre- and post-war years (Take it from the Chorus | Radio 7). Chorus lines, it turns out, have long been a great British export with the Tiller Girls drilled like an army in order to be exactly together in their movements. (The military analogy also holds for their strict costume requirements.) Respectability was hot issue too for some dance troups. Bluebell Girls founder Margaret Kelly euphemistically refers with distaste to girls being expected to "entertain the tired businessmen" after a show.

The roll of the chorus changed dramatically with success of musical Oklahoma though – transformed from a row of decorative legs to an acting ensemble, and expected to be versatile performers with a wide repertoire. But whatever the style, doing one show for years requires a high boredom threshold: Quentin recalls her own stint in Les Mis being lightened with an on-stage game of "pass the squirrel".

If all that singing and dancing and jumping about has taken it out of you, then sit back for 15 minutes with Radio 4's Afternoon Reading series, Made in Bristol (Listen here). The run of programmes features short stories by Bristol-based writers, the first of which – Rip Off by Rachel Bentham – concerns a reasonably famous urban myth from the area. But in the interests of not spoiling it for you, I shan't say which one ...